Computex 2017: ARM Introduces the Cortex-A75 and A55 Processors

At Taiwan’s Computex, ARM officially unveiled their next-gen processors for the devices of the near future – the Cortex-A75, designed for flagship-tier performance, and its little sibling, the ultra-efficient Cortex-A55.

According to ARM, the new Cortex-A75 boasts a decent 22% improvement over the old A73 processor, with its Mali-G72 graphics unit posting 25% improvement in efficiency compared to its predecessor, the G71.

The performance and power efficiency boosts are nothing new in ARM’s iterative CPU design. More importantly, these processors are the first DynamIQ CPUs in ARM’s lineup, capable of more diverse core clustering than ever, building on the success of their big.LITTLE design.

Chip makers utilizing these processors now have greater flexibility with thecombinations of A75 and A55 cores in their SoCs. For example, Qualcomm can make a new, mid-tier 8-core chipset that combines 1 Cortex-A75, for tasks requiring peak performance, and 7 A55 for general power efficiency and light load. Or, they can manufacture a flagship-tier chipset with 3 A75 cores and 5 A55 cores for maximum throughput. It will now depend on the chip makers on how they want to position their new SoCs for market consumption.

Aside from DynamIQ technology, the new A75 and A55 cores are targeted for artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality and virtual reality applications. Not only will these new processors power machine learning, they can also benefit from it through improved data prefetching and performance.

Other, more technical details can be found at The Verge’s coverage of ARM’s new cores. The company expects the new A75 and A55 to be in the market – inside new SoCs and smartphones – by early 2018. Though, ARM is not discounting a recent tech phenomenon called “China Speed”, where Chinese vendors lately, have been implementing newly designed technology as early and as fast as possible.